Harvard vs. Bed Stuy: Nobody Wins
Chanequa Campbell, 21, grew up in Bedford Stuyvesant. The now-infamous Harvard senior, linked to a drug-related homicide on campus, is back in Brooklyn, awaiting the arrival of her possessions.
Whether Ms. Campbell’s involvement in the murder was criminal or not – the main story line in the coverage of this tragic event and subsequent charges of racism on Harvard’s part – is somewhat beside the point.
Obviously, if the Brooklyn native was in fact criminally responsible, then she should face the consequences of her actions. However, it’s hard to imagine a scenario involving a male, white or affluent student suffering the consequences Ms. Campbell has, without having been charged with a crime. (You can only imagine what the affluent kids get away with, because you’ll never know.) Especially since public opinion seems to have already indicted Ms. Campbell as much as the neighborhood in which she was raised. It’s clear that at least one of those things is guilty of violence.
And for all its protestations to the contrary, lest we forget how segregated and prejudiced Boston feels, especially to a New Yorker. Drug-related homicide is rampant in many of the nation’s urban, suburban and even exurban communities. A section south of Boston called Mattapan, is often referred to as Murderpan. Up until now, the only difference between the drug trade at the Ivy League school and in the drug infested ghetto across town was the violence.
Though these recent events have been tragic, it’s difficult to miss the silver lining in this saga. This is an opportunity for the Harvard community, and the nation, to wrap their heads around the violent drug trade, which has been ignored for so long. Frankly, it’s the reason why people don’t watch local television news anymore. Nobody wants a daily run down of the horrors of urban violence. It’s the equivalent of thousands of shootings, with the same motivations as the one that took place on Harvard’s campus.
To expel Ms. Campbell and bar her from graduation might be fair – we’ll come to find out – but regardless of her standing with the school, this is an issue that will only go away until the next time it happens. And the next, and the next. It’s time to reconsider our approach to policing, the illegality of certain drugs, sentencing laws, and the broken justice system, which are all at the root of America’s issues with drugs and violence.
How cheap is life here that rather than legalizing and regulating a plant with anecdotal evidence of medical benefits, we’d rather let people lose their lives over transporting and selling it.
Full disclosure: I am also a native New Yorker who attended Harvard, and I’d like to invite Ms. Campbell to respond to her critics in her own words, right here on Brooklyn The Borough. Please forward this to her if you know her.
